Abstract

Since the early 2000s transnational surrogacy has emerged as a new capitalist frontier founded on the intensification of the commodification of women’s reproductive labours, bodies and biologies. This has resulted in academic and policy debates on whether to outlaw surrogacy altogether or to ban commercial surrogacy in favour of altruistic forms of surrogacy. Rather than tackling surrogacy in moralising terms of ‘altruistic’ gift-giving versus ‘greedy’ money-making, in this article we draw on feminist political economy literature on social reproduction to propose an integrative reproductive labour perspective that looks at the dialectics of waged and unwaged work involved in the process of (re)producing people. Drawing on empirical research data on commercial surrogacy in Georgia, we analyse how this dialectical relation between exploitation of waged work (surrogate) and appropriation of unwaged work (mother) operates on the workfloor. We explore Maria Mies’ concept of ‘housewifization’ to argue that processes of exploitation are deepened in the Georgian surrogacy industry, partially because surrogates refrain/are refrained from identifying as workers and as such are not afforded labour rights nor considered to produce value.

摘要

自 2000 年代初以来，跨国代孕已成为一个新的资本主义前沿领域，其基础是女性生殖劳动、身体和生物学的商品化加剧。这导致了关于是完全取缔代孕还是禁止商业代孕以支持利他形式的代孕的学术和政策辩论。在这篇文章中，我们不是用“利他主义”送礼与“贪婪”赚钱的道德化术语来解决代孕问题，而是借鉴关于社会再生产的女权主义政治经济学文献，提出一个综合的再生产劳动观点，该观点着眼于有偿和有偿的辩证法。 （再）生产人的过程中涉及的无偿工作。借鉴格鲁吉亚商业代孕的实证研究数据，我们分析了对有偿工作（替代品）的剥削与对无酬工作（母亲）的占用之间的辩证关系如何在工作场所运作。我们探讨 Maria Mies 的“家庭主妇化”概念，以论证格鲁吉亚代孕行业的剥削过程加深了，部分原因是代孕者避免/被避免识别为工人，因此不享有劳动权利，也不被认为产生价值。